Yeardley Love: UVA Lacrosse Player Found Dead

Flickr photo by dcJohnThe death of Yeardley Love, a 22-year-old University of Virginia lacrosse player, has once again rocked a state where tragedy on college campuses has become all too familiar.

Love was discovered dead yesterday in her apartment, and police have already arrested George Huguely, another UVA lacrosse player, and charged him with first-degree murder.

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According to reports in The Daily Progress, the newspaper in Charlottesville, Virginia, Love and Huguely had dated in the past -- although it's unclear whether they were romantically linked at the time of Love's death.

Both were successful lacrosse players, members of teams that were considered national contenders. They were 22 and natives of nearby Maryland.

Huguely's lawyer has already come out to say the death was accidental in nature, telling the AP he's confident it was "not intended."

The UVA community is rocked once again by the tragedy, less than a month after fourth-year student Joe Arwood was discovered unconscious in a frat house, dying two days later of unknown causes.

It's also five months after the community was similarly rocked by the discovery of the skeletal remains of Morgan Harrington, a student from rival college Virginia Tech, on a Charlottesville farm in January.

Harrington had been in town for a Metallica concert when she went missing in October. Her disappearance and eventual discovery received substantial national press largely because of her status as a student at Tech and its own storied past. The shooting rampage of Seung Hui Cho on the Tech campus in Blacksburg in April 2007 changed security procedures for institutions of learning across the country.

Unfortunately, all the security measures in the world can't thwart human cruelty. Yeardley Love's death is another in a string of tragedies in Virginia, but her story is hers alone.